Austin Zeiderman

Austin Zeiderman is an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in the cultural and political dimensions of cities, with a specific focus on Latin America. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University as well as a Master of Environmental Science degree from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Colgate University.

His book, Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá (2016, Duke UP), focuses on how security and risk shape the relationship between citizens and the state in the self-built settlements of the urban periphery. Austin is also beginning a new research project on urban, environmental, and infrastructural transformations motivated by the promise of a post-conflict future in Colombia.

Aspects of Austin’s research have appeared in a range of venues, such as Antipode, Environment and Planning A, Public Culture, American Ethnologist, openDemocracy, and the Guardian. He has received fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. From 2012 to 2014, Austin coordinated the Urban Uncertainty project at LSE Cities, where he remains a Research Associate. Raised in Philadelphia, he has previously worked on urban and environmental issues in Baltimore and San Francisco.

 

• Cities and urbanism

• Urban politics, governance and the state

• Security and risk

• Rights, citizenship and democracy

• Urban infrastructures, ecologies and environments

• Colonial and postcolonial history

• Housing, resettlement and displacement

• Ethnographic and historical methods

• Race and ethnicity

• Latin America

• Science and technology

• Urban and social theory

 Selected recent publications:

• Austin Zeiderman, Nikhil Anand, Stephen Daniels, Jennifer Wolch, Erik Swyngedouw & Matthew Gandy 'The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination' The AAG Review of Books, Volume 4, Issue 3, 2016

• Zeiderman, Austin Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá (2016), Duke University Press

• “Prognosis Past: The Temporal Politics of Disaster in Colombia.” (2016) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22 (S1):163-180.

• “Adaptive Publics: Building Climate Constituencies in Bogotá.” (2016) Public Culture 28 (2):398-413.

• “Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia’s Future Port-City.” (2016) Antipode 48 (3):809-831.

• Zeiderman, Austin, Kaker, Sobia Ahmad, Silver, Jonathan and Wood, Astrid (2015) Uncertainty and Urban Life. Public Culture 27 (2): 281–304.

• Zeiderman, Austin (2015) Spaces of Uncertainty: Governing Urban Environmental Hazards. In Modes of Uncertainty: Anthropological Cases, edited by Limor Samimian-Darash and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• “Living Dangerously: Biopolitics and Urban Citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia.” (2013) American Ethnologist 40 (1): 71–87.

• “On shaky ground: the making of risk in Bogotá.” (2012) Environment and Planning A 44 (7): 1570–1588.

• “For Bogotá’s desplazados, living in a high-risk zone is a very mixed blessing.” (2014) The Guardian, 28 March.

• “Securing Bogotá.” (2013) OpenDemocracy, 14 February.

• “El Cartucho ist verschunden” (“The Disappearance of El Cartucho”). (2013) Die Welt Der Städte, le Monde diplomatique No. 14, 83-85.

• “‘Apocalipsis anunciado’: Un viraje en la política de riesgo en Colombia a partir de 1985” (“Apocalypse Foretold: A Shift in the Politics of Risk in Colombia since 1985”). (2010) Revista de Ingeniería 31:119-131, special issue on “Cities and Risk” (co-authored with Laura Astrid Ramírez).

• “Antropología y ciudad: Hacia un análisis crítico e histórico” (“Anthropology and City: Towards a Critical-Historical Analysis”). (2008) Antípoda 7:63-97 (co-authored with Andrés Salcedo Fidalgo).

• “Cities of the Future? Megacities and the Space/Time of Urban Modernity.” (2008) Critical Planning 15:23-39.

• “Ruralizing the City: The Great Migration and Environmental Rehabilitation in Baltimore, Maryland.” (2006) Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 13:209-235